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Logically defend the statement "Violences never solves anything"

Ahh... I didn't click those links because.. well, it sounded like an "uplifting" spiritual book. Gaiman and Pratchett make it an entirely different story....
 
Most of the discussion thus far rests on the wrong assumption that their is any such thing as a "solution" in any absolute sense. There isn't. All solutions and all problems only exist in highly contextualized relative terms. Every solution is also a problem and vice versa. And no thing or event has the internal property of being either. Problem and solution are purely relational terms like "love" and "causes". They emerge only as a byproduct of how a thing or action relates to some other thing. Since there are infinite things that any one thing can relate to, all things have problem and solution relationships with various other things.
Saying "Violence is never a solution" without specifying the specifying the "for X" is at best as meaningless as saying "Rabbits cause", and arguably just outright false since the "never" actually does imply "for all and any X", which is demonstrably false.

In sum, yes, violence is very often a solution and often the best solution. It is also often a problem. It depends on perspective and subjective goals.
 
ronburgundy said:
Most of the discussion thus far rests on the wrong assumption that their is any such thing as a "solution" in any absolute sense. There isn't. All solutions and all problems only exist in highly contextualized relative terms. Every solution is also a problem and vice versa. And no thing or event has the internal property of being either. Problem and solution are purely relational terms like "love" and "causes". They emerge only as a byproduct of how a thing or action relates to some other thing. Since there are infinite things that any one thing can relate to, all things have problem and solution relationships with various other things.
Saying "Violence is never a solution" without specifying the specifying the "for X" is at best as meaningless as saying "Rabbits cause", and arguably just outright false since the "never" actually does imply "for all and any X", which is demonstrably false.

In sum, yes, violence is very often a solution and often the best solution. It is also often a problem. It depends on perspective and subjective goals.
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...and personal or participant morality, or, it doesn't because the discussion is rational based only on moral value positions.
 
Juma said:
Loren Pechtel said:
Someone is trying to rape you. You kill them. Problem solved. Thus the assertion that we are supposed to defend is false.
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And since you never will ve able to prove that he tried to rape you you will be executed for murder.

Nice "solution"
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Now who would want to rape Loren anyway? He might really get himself into a real jam killing somebody trying to rape him...nobody can believe it!
 
tantric said:
I'm just curious - that is a wholly meaningless platitude, right
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With cryptic statements such as this one, you need to articulate the intended meaning before logic could possibly be used to any effect.

Let's assume that the statement is "Violence never solves anything".

Obviously, if you're subjected to violence, using violence yourself can solve the problem so presumably it's not what the statement means. Rather, the statement probably targets any situation where there is some problem to be solved but no violence yet. In this case, is it a good idea to choose to solve the problem using, i.e. introducing, violence?

Ok, different people will have different views on that but both a "yes" and a "no" would be legitimate answers.

Also, the statement probably does not concern political entities such as states, countries, alliances etc. It's a suggestion to individual people as to how to behave in their lives. It was probably never intended to end wars, invasions, organised crime etc. where the immediate objective is valued over and above any distant or uncertain consequence like, say, the situation in Syria and Iraq now or the possibility of spending the rest of your life in prison.

Then, personally, I can agree with it as an emollient pronouncement that should do more good than harm.
EB
 
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